The Curmudgeon’s Rules for Rascals

Suppose you wanted to become a leader of the creationist movement and earn a living that way. And suppose further — forgive the redundancies — you were unscrupulous, unprincipled, dishonest, and ruthlessly willing to exploit the weak-minded.

Now then, whether you plan to operate a website, a creation museum, a ministry, a publishing operation, or some combination of the foregoing, what rules should govern your enterprise? You can probably think of more than we’ll suggest here, but what follows are the rules we have gleaned by studying the activities of such persons. Here we go!

1: Know the weaknesses and insecurities of your intended audience. Creationists have little education, so you should use that to your advantage by demonizing the educated. Always claim that those people are arrogant, godless, and afraid of The Truth™. This is closely related to the next rule:

2: Constantly flatter your followers. Tell them that the worldview you are promoting is superior — morally and intellectually — to everything else that may be out there. Never miss an opportunity to tell your followers that they are the ones with superior intelligence and insight.

3: Identify and always vilify an enemy. This is vital. If you present yourself as being engaged in a desperate struggle against a wicked foe, your followers will eagerly support your efforts. The best kind of enemy is one that won’t fight back because they regard you as so foolish that it’s beneath them to respond to your arguments and debate challenges. In the case of creationism, the perfect enemy is Darwinism. Better yet, your enemy is science itself.

4: Never make specific predictions that can be tested. However, it’s perfectly safe to predict what will occur in the far future, or in the afterlife.

5: Use the news. Whenever people do bad things, always say that it’s the fault of your adversaries. In the case of natural disasters, if you must comment, say that they happen for a good reason, even if we can’t comprehend it.

6: Always ask for contributions that will enable you to continue your crusade. Point out that your adversaries are funded by the government, which is part of the big conspiracy, while you are the true champion of the people.

7: Besides requesting contributions, always have things that can be sold to your followers, such as video tapes, pamphlets, etc. Such things are cheap and easy to produce, and can easily be sold on the internet.

15 responses to “The Curmudgeon’s Rules for Rascals”

Be smug (excessively self-satisfied or feeling of immense satisfaction). After a great pronouncement that Darwinist are evil and that evolution cannot possibly happen; sit back with a smug grin on your face and your followers will believe you even more.

Make bold statement/lies: “There are no transitional fossils”, “more and more physicists are abandoning the Big Bang theory”, “Darwinism is crumbling”.
Correction: Science itself is not the enemy, it is ‘secular’ science. They avoid the term ‘creation science’ by just calling it ‘science’.

That is so true! I once got into a “discussion” with a YE creationist. After telling me that most physicists are abandoning the Big Bang theory, I exploded. I made a fool of myself (in front of my family). He just sat there, arms crossed, smiling and repeatingly saying “I enjoy myself”.

At #1 you forgot ELITIST! Its amazing how the way the leaders can make that sound insulting, when it is a description of those that are experts and well trained!
Said in whinny voice…Don’t those ELITIST evilutionist know its just a THEORY!!!! Its amazing how they can make those two words sound like insults!

8: When asked a difficult question which destroys your worldview just make stuff up.

For instance, given that meat-eating did not exist before the Flood if asked why would spiders make pre-diluvial webs suggest (but not necessarily maintain) that perhaps insects (btw, Kent, spiders aren’t insects) aren’t alive but are only “complicated self-replicating food sources” and therefore might not be included in the biblical meaning of a living being. Not being biblically alive spiders and insects could therefore eat whatever they liked. Having thus sown an onanistic barren seed, move quickly onto the next question.

I wrote a similar list several years ago dealing with the subtopic of creationist rhetoric. These were my favorite two:

1. Use the word “truth” repeatedly (twice every sentence is a good rule of thumb) — even when it doesn’t truth make any sense, truth. Also, make truth sure that you use a truth descriptor when possible such as “real truth,” “ultimate truth” or even better–“true truth.”

2. Use a middle-school version of post-modernism to defend “differing interpretations” of evidence. This way you can look at a square and call it a circle and say that it’s “all about different starting assumptions.”

I especially like #4. It explains why discoveroids never describe specified complexity in units of any sort that could constitute a testable statement. They never calculate a predicted percentage of junk DNA beyond which design would not be indicated. While making up odds against some natural thing, discoveroids never calculate the alternative probability that a designer exists and the probability that said designer made the thing.

Discoveroids in particular and creationists in general strive constantly to avoid any statement that is quantified or otherwise susceptible to testing.

Conflate and exaggerate: If someone points out a flaw in your creation science methodology, it can only be an attack by the Galactic Atheist Cabal of Satanist America Haters on the foundations of all of Christiandom, if not on Jesus himself.

Play the persecution card! The more paranoid and far-fetched your claims to be the victim of organised cabals opposed to your TRVTH, the less the rubes will notice just how threadbare the evidence for your professed beliefs actually is.

This blog's RSS feed link:

Search for:

Email Subscription

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Commenting Rules

Creationists should read the rules before posting any comments. See Comment Rules.

Here's how to use the available codes. Note that codes are used in pairs, to turn the effect on and then off again. Please don’t start one of these codes without closing it:

For italics:

<em>text</em>

For bold:

<strong>text</strong>

For strikethrough:

<del>text</del>

For blockquotes:

<blockquote>this will appear both indented and in italics</blockquote>